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I've been galavanting all over country with no fixed abode the last few days, hence no letters. I've so many irons in the fire that I shall just have to leave them to frizzle themselves out when I go to you. They'd all not amount to a row of pins if I suspected that you were really needing me but I don't think you are.

I want
so
to see the foreigners and have lost a lot of chances. Madame Jusserand invited us to the Embassy to meet them but it was so impromptu that the card did not reach me until the hour and you weren't here and I couldn't go alone. Then this afternoon they were on view, that's it literally, at Belasco and I didn't hear about it until too late to get tickets. They say there never was known such a jam, every one's wild over Joffre. Did you ever hear of anything lovelier than his speech from the Vice President's table at the Senate this morning. “I do not speak English. Vive la Amerique”. Bert wants to give him the annual banquet at the Geographic, it seems as if no American general could be as much applauded as the hero of the Marne. I wonder what Viviani and the English think and the people at home.

Meanwhile every official seems more pessimistic than the last. Nobody trusts Russia's power to hold to her word and the censorship over the submarines makes one fear everything. Bert00072
doubts we have come in too late to save the Allies. Not only is the whole burden of the war on us now, but they are at the end of their tether and the most we can hope for is the status quo ante bellum. Don't you remember the days of the Confederate iron clad, how she would have completely annihilated our navy if it had not been for the sudden appearance of the Monitor? They say the situation today is nearly paralleled. We just must have some means of checking the submarines. Today I meant to devote to packing instead I went to see demonstrations of home canning for they say we must plant every spare foot of ground and of course the produce must be canned for shipment. Elsie is getting a great farmer. She bought a two row corn planter yesterday and today five more piggies. She doesn't know whether she will fatten them for market next fall or will make them into hams herself. The lecturer said if the girls would realize that the boys in overalls were as much fighters for the war as the boys in khaki we might hope to win it. Please tell John McDermid he just must make the school boys and girls till their school garden and grow vegetables for the cause. Here the Boy Scouts have gone to work in some govt. land and their produce is to go to France, if the submarines don't send it to the bottom of the sea.

Robert Marsh, assembly man, has volunteered and is to commence training for officer ship at Plattsburg May 15, he already has trained there two years ago. He says he has been opposed to conscription but his experience and observation the last two years has converted him and he telegraphed my appeal to his Congressman.